Fake Shore Drive: A tastemaker of Chicago rap

Andrew Barber started blogging without a single contact in rap music. Now he is the contact. But it's getting harder to be an unassuming fan as his influence spreads.

April 04, 2013|Christopher Borrelli

Andrew Barber is seen in Chicago in the office of Fake Shore Drive, his website that covers hip-hop music and culture. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

Andrew Barber deals almost exclusively with young men who have come into money. Some are newly rich; some started poor and worked their way to comfortable; and others, arguably his bread and butter, are not wealthy yet but stand to make a chunk of change. Some, he finds, and some come to him.

Actually, the majority come to him — to the small loft that he rents in a renovated Pilsen warehouse. If you're a rapper or music producer and you're in Chicago, you want to know Andrew Barber.

Six years ago, he was a rap-obsessed 20-something from Indiana, selling advertising in Chicago for the FX network, hoping someday to work his way into a record company A&R job, developing established artists and looking for new sounds. But he had zero contacts in the music business, never mind in the cloistered world of hip-hop. Now, at 32, Barber is editor of Fake Shore Drive, the website he created in 2007 devoted to Chicago rap. Barber is the contact now — one of the most influential a Chicago rapper can make.

On a recent winter day, his friend, the celebrated painter Hebru Brantley, whose studio is on the same warehouse floor, gestured in the direction of Barber's office, which is marked with a large neon Fake Shore sign. “That sign,” Brantley said, cracking up, “Andrew and I joke, but it's no exaggeration: You come into this building sometimes, off hours, and no kidding, you'll find a rapper shooting a video in front of that sign, gesturing at it, making sure you know they paid respect. I can't even go near his office now, I just avoid it: Every hot new guy and Johnny-come-lately will be in there, looking to score points.”

Chicago producer Young Chop, one of those newly flush young men — whose hard, grimy sound, heard on Chief Keef's best-known records, is synonymous with contemporary Chicago rap — said: “First of all, if you're in Chicago and you're a new (rap) artist, you are looking at Fake Shore. You just have to be! I don't know why I should have to explain why, you know? People get their picture with Andrew's sign, then post it because (expletive) is important. It's how we get some ideas — this site! It's how labels get some ideas!”

At a glance, Fake Shore Drive is basically a music blog, a compendium of local rap news, a smidge of criticism and assorted music videos and lists (“The 30 Best Young Chop Beats of 2012”). But it's also the first place Chicago rappers go to leak new music, send mixtapes and test new beats. While the site has been locally popular for years — as a kind of rallying point for a fragmented scene — the past 12 months have been especially good to Barber: He became MTV's Midwest correspondent. He landed a spot on the regional board for the Grammy Awards. As news about Keef and the burgeoning Chicago rap scene went national — and the site landed more and more promotional events with national brands (Adidas, Mountain Dew, a Fake Shore/Red Bull-sponsored showcase of Chicago rap acts at last month's South by Southwest music festival in Texas) — Fake Shore's readership has steadily climbed, to roughly 500,000 visitors a month.

Then came Barber's list of “10 New Chicago Rappers to Watch Out For,” written for Complex magazine and posted to Fake Shore. It came out in February 2012; by December, nine of the 10 rappers were signed to major labels.

“Last year was this perfect storm in Chicago rap,” Barber said, “because before, periodically, you'd think, like with Kanye and Lupe (Fiasco), ‘Now's Chicago time,' then it would fizzle. Last year, all these guys — Keef, King Louie, Lil Durk, producers like Chop — guys mostly unheard of in 2011, they went huge. I would like to be able to say I was responsible but the truth is, most of them would have been signed without me.”

Still, John Monopoly, the Chicago-based manager of King Louie (and former manager of Kanye West), said: “Fake Shore is simply the most influential hip-hop website in the Midwest, and its importance should be kind of hard to downplay at this point.” Indeed, Nylo, a Chicago rapper who signed recently to Epic, said: “Because (Fake Shore) was one of the first places to get behind me, I know people found me through them.” She's been sampled by Kid Cudi and Mac Miller, both of whom discovered her on Fake Shore, she said. “The site's meant a lot because, simply, Andrew liked my stuff, he posted it without any vested interest, so people started to listen. They report what they like — I see them as the most pure form of rap journalism.”

She meant it as a compliment. But Barber doesn't love that word, “journalism.”